Inner Conflict
by Domaz
Summary: C1one, a depressed teen, through numerous bad mistakes ends up in the Sword Art Online. However, he doesn't have the nerve to fight to clear the nightmare game. Will he die cold, forgotten, and a coward, or survive and become a legendary survivor. Rated M for suggestive themes, violence and strong language. Please DM me with any grammar or spelling mistakes.
1. Prologue

Sword Art Online is owned by A-1 Pictures, Aniplex USA and Reki Kawahara. I only own my own character and story. All property is owned by their rightful owners. This is a non-profit fanfiction.

 **Prologue**

"I'm not happy with my life. While I'm not suicidal, I'd take a chance to never be born any day of the week." These were my thoughts two years ago, and over the past three years, the amount of shit life has piled on me hasn't gotten any smaller. Sure, I lived in a moderately wealthy family in a country that had some of the best social support in the world, but most of that wealth went towards my older brother and his stupid aspirations, with me only getting gifts on notable occasions. Everything I wanted, that didn't get approved by my parents, I had to get myself. Add to this the fact that I was bullied for ten years and you've got the perfect recipe for suicide.

This however changed. A year ago I turned 18, graduated high-school and moved out. For a while stuff was good. Freedom over all of my time outside studies, no excessive yelling, and no complaints about technology caused by a lack of knowledge in the subject. Fast-forward half a year and shit got worse. A lot worse. The past six months have been some of the worst in my life.

Prior to my university studies, I blew most of my study savings on a nice apartment and furniture. I was relying on getting both a good summer job and a reliable source of income through a part-time job during studies. Neither of those happened. This was a huge bummer for me since I had a significant points in computer science and programming in my CV. So at the end of Summer 2021 I back the Kickstarter of the NerveGear and pre-ordered Sword Art Online. Half a year of school and wasting money later the NerveGear decides to arrive at my door months earlier than it supposed to. Attached to the box was a note thanking me for being one of the most generous backers. "Well thanks for reminding me of something I've regretted for half a year!" I had shouted. I got some yells back. Not from Akihiko, but my neighbors telling me to "Shut the fuck up."

Over the past six months I've been developing gun mechanics and a safety-killswitch on the proprietary engine distributed with the NerveGear DK1. I figured that by eating rationally and spending all of my free time unconscious in VR, I could easily survive until summer break. I had always been underweight, so not gaining weight isn't a problem. Besides I've never really been keen on my appearance. Sure, I got picked on because of it, but that isn't different from the past 10 years of school either.

Then, in July 2022, my saving grace arrived. The Sword Art Online closed beta.


	2. Welcome to Aincrad

1.

The first time I logged into SAO, I had low expectations. After all, it was a closed beta. However, my expectations were completely blown out of the water. Visually, the game was absolutely stunning! Vibrant colors, large and diverse environments and inviting towns. Add enticing side-quests and a surprisingly deep combat system for it's simplicity and I thought I had been reincarnated into a utopia, that completely trounced any and all competition that existed and that would ever exist.

I, however completely sucked at the combat. Coming from a FPS background, I knew that learning swords would be taxing, but this was a whole new level. With CQC being practically the only way to fight, it put you at constant risk. Add to that my sniper instincts of expecting to die in one hit, I decided to mostly avoid combat for the time being and focus more on exploration. During my time exploring, I also found several bugs including a player model glitch, self-killing enemies, a self-killing boss, broken exit-flags and an animation glitch among numerous others. I later got told that I'd get a small reward upon release for finding these bugs.

Then, on the 6th of November, 2022, Sword Art Online finally got released.

"7 AM… What a bitch of a time to launch," I thought as the clock struck 6 AM. Being European has its ups and downs. Being a European otaku is mostly downs. Everything gets always released in the morning. I'm nocturnal, so this has become a serious problem for me. Multiple releases have ended with an all-nighter and the consumption of liters of energy drinks. But this time I get the last laugh: Full-dive VR disables all your motor controls and makes you unconscious, basically putting you in a pre-determined lucid dream. This means that you don't need as much sleep, and by avoiding combat, barely any.

I take a brisk shower, eat a quick snack which includes a protein bar and an energy drink and settle into my sleeping pod, setting my AC to 75%. As I jam the NerveGear on my head, only one thought goes through my head. "Goodbye cruel world."

"Link Start!"

I'm momentarily taken over by darkness as the NerveGear scans and connects my brain to the microwaves it emits. Seconds later I'm greeted by the somewhat familiar character creation screen. I enter my character name C1one and confirm that I want to download my previous living avatar from the cloud as well as redeem my rewards for apparently being the company's practically only QA-member. I then get transported back into Aincrad and the good old Town of Beginnings.

I immediately enable the maximum privacy setting for my character only leaving C1one [B] above my avatar and start sprinting towards the town's shopping district. During the beta, I made sure to memorize the entire town of beginnings and it's contents. Imagine how pissed I was after I found out that you could record video and save screenshots. I did take advantage of this after the beta to study as much about mobs, attack patterns and Sword Skills thanks to a guy nicknamed キリト [Kirito]. Using my beta knowledge I locate a back-alley Easter-egg-shop and acquire a map of the area, an upgraded sword and upgraded armor for the price of a big, fat, doughnut. Not bad going, if you ask me. With my newly acquired gear equipped through a much improved HUD with no gestures whatsoever, I leave for the fields surrounding the town of beginnings in hunt for lvl1 boars and wolves for easy xp. I needed all the col and levels I could get at the start with the player count increasing tenfold since the beta. Being over-leveled is key for me since I plan on playing solo. The main draw of MMOs is combat, and I've already established myself as a complete bitch, so being in a guild or a party would just weigh it down more than I'm weighed down by my misery.

2 hours of farming, and I've somehow managed to accumulate enough xp to hit level 10. This seemed unnaturally fast to me. I left back for the shopping district to sell my loot. While sorting through my inventory, I came across a new inventory slot simply titled Beta, however the flavor text described the items as "Your rewards for service during the closed beta period". Within the slot resided a non-tradable and non-marketable item called a "Lucky Egg," which claimed to boost my xp gain by 50% and numerous other locked and hidden items.

The town of beginnings seems much more populated, and for some reason, I seem to be getting a lot of trash talk thrown my way. I tried pushing it out of my head, but this guy named Kibaou and his bullshit really hit hard. I typically don't give a fuck about insults, but Kibaou's arrogance really ticks me off. He was clearly mad at me since I had completely left him in the dust in terms of farming efficiency, thus being top 5 on the leveling scoreboard. I try passively talking myself out of his argument involving beta testers, when my saving grace arrived. "Hey, Kill-me-now, if you want to vent at a beta tester, why me and not Mr-no-1-in-literally-every-stat, who seems to be stalking our conversation?" I throw at him. He seemed to give my insult little notice and stormed off to yell at Kirito and his friend Klein instead. I chuckle at his outburst as I leave to complete some starter quests just to fuck with him later. SAO's starting town seemed to have the problem, that quests were on a timer and could only be completed every 30-minutes.

I got jolted awake from my nap by a loud beeping noise and hundreds of confused voices. As I open my eyes, I see a blood-red sky and the entirety of the Town of Beginnings shadowed by a figure garbed in a crimson cloak yelling over the crowd. "Greetings and welcome to Sword Art Online!" the voice boomed. "You may have noticed, that the logout button has been removed from the menu and the game's player count dropping by thousands. Neither of these are bugs and both of the previously mentioned events are in conjunction with each other. The death of avatars results in the death of players and forced removal of the NerveGear will place players in an everlasting coma, with full-dive VR being the only means of communication, before they die in 6 months. The only way out is clearing all 100 floors of Castle Aincrad and beating Sword Art Online. Upon completion, the game will logout all remaining players and the microwaves injected into the players in a coma will be dissipated. However this will also completely wipe said players' memories and they will have to start their complete life over."

This speech was by far the most conflicting thing I've heard. On one hand, being transported into a MMO has always been a dream of mine, but the fear of actual death takes away nearly all of the satisfaction. Sure I could socialize with people, but being social could also get me killed. And death in a game would be worse than death in the real world. Nobody outside my killers would know how I died and nobody would care. I'd be dumped in to a mass grave with thousands of others. No impact on the world and its cruelty continuing on.

I looked up at the embodiment of the monster that trapped me here. It spoke five last words before exploding in to millions of crystals and vanishing.

"Good luck and have fun."


End file.
